


Another Night On Mars

by bisexualbluesargent



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, post-trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:41:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualbluesargent/pseuds/bisexualbluesargent
Summary: Blue Sargent was strange.





	Another Night On Mars

Blue Sargent was strange.

She'd known this her entire life. She'd known this since kindergarten, when parents would whisper to each other about the girl who had a psychic for a mother. She knew about the condescending looks thrown at her artfully torn clothes, her hair that was too messy for its own good. The other girls would tell her to straighten it in middle school. That was about the time that she stopped trying to make friends.

And what an idea that was: friendship. Blue Sargent was strange and something else, something more, and all everyone wanted to do was embody everything she didn't get. She tried so hard to get it. In seventh grade Blue convinced her mother to drive her to the mall in the city next to Henrietta, refusing to tell her why. Really, it was after a particularly bad day at school. She'd been pushed into lockers and drawn on with marker and she'd suddenly felt very tired of being thirteen in a town full of people who were her complete opposite. She'd been tired of standing on the outside, watching other kids being so happy and so _normal_. But standing there in front of that long mirror, in a dressing room with clothes in a shade of purple she despised draped over her arms, she realized it wasn't just her clothes, it wasn't just her hair, it wasn't just her family.

She might've run out of the store into Maura's arms that day, sobbing. People had stared and she hadn't cared. So she stopped caring, from then on. She ripped her clothes even more vigorously, she taped up trees on her walls and wrote lists of all the places she was going to visit when she was out of Henrietta. She was done with being thirteen, convinced that the world was going to eat her whole. She was done with watering herself down so that others could feel better about themselves. High school came, and she was thrust into a world both worse and better. Blue was loud and so unapologetically herself that some people couldn't take it. Or they thought they could, and Blue couldn't see anything in them, despite her attempts to do so. In the back of her mind, she'd realized she was being pretentious. Snobby. Bratty, even. But she hated sitting at a table in a cafeteria talking about school, or how tired she was, or how school was making her tired. There was so much more to life than this. There had to be.

She kept putting up her hair in the most ridiculously messy buns possible. She kept her curly hair unbrushed. She wore outfits that made people point and snicker to their friends and she would go into class and raise her hand to tell the teacher about how sexist he was. She was the annoying feminist, the band kid who didn't have any friends, even when she stopped signing up for band sophomore year. She could be kind. She could start a conversation. Nobody doubted that. But people started realizing that even when they were inviting her in, she would be gazing out the window at something far away instead of listening to their conversation. She would be doodling palm trees or stars or animals long extinct into her notebook as she talked about that new film you hadn't seen. She was the smart girl who wouldn't shut up, the girl who wouldn't stop making jokes about every teacher, the one who tried too hard, the one who didn't care at all. She was the kid religious mothers told their children to stay away from, the good influence, the girl with horrible music taste, the kid who had liked that song first, the girl who never wore dresses, who had too short a skirt. No one truly knew her and she was fine with it. Just fine.

But eventually she met those boys who were too much even for her family of psychics and it was like her soul was singing, because even though everything was hard and complicated they were all so themselves, so bold where she always was, even when they weren't trying to be. Henry Cheng said they were going to Venezuela and she thought about it for days. School didn't matter anymore. It felt like it never had. She was overwhelmed with magic and Welsh kings and tarot cards and these friends that she wished she had known her entire life. Even Ronan, who unsettled her because they were so alike. They were all so different but they were all so alive. She couldn't get enough of it. Even when it was almost over, when Gansey was surely going to die and never come back, when she was worried about college applications and where Noah was fading out to and if Adam was getting enough sleep. She sometimes hated the idea of being a mirror, always a reflection of another's greatness. She tried so hard to be so much. She wanted so badly to stand out. She loved her family, she didn't want to leave them, but after days of sitting under that tree in her backyard and wanting to grab the sky through her bedroom window she longed for something. Something. The world was so indefinite and it pulled her towards that uncertainty. Gansey came back to life and the magic got a little fainter, but she's not sure if it did, really, because sitting in the Pig with everyone, yelling lyrics at the top of her lungs with the windows down on their way to the beach, she felt like every bad thing that had happened in her life was nothing compared to this. That strangeness she had cultivated so carefully and dearly had made into something bold and alive, and everyone in that car was, too. She was going to Venezuela. And Greece. And Antarctica. She could do anything, but she was in that car with the people whose souls she wanted to wrap around her own.

It was this: her hands around Gansey's, around Henry's. It was kissing without fear. It was Adam grinning in the back seat at Ronan, the bags under his eyes almost gone. It was mix tapes and playlists full of Madonna and 80's anthems and electronica and showtunes that Henry had insisted were great. It was the sun almost burning her skin, rays enveloping Gansey's skin and making him look regal. It was reaching her hand out the window to ride along the wind. It was letting her hair whip around her face, it was heart shaped sunglasses, it was loving with every part of her body, it was laughter that sounded like something else. Something more.

Blue Sargent was strange, and so were they.


End file.
